The Golden Torc

by Julian May

  If he gave a hail, would anyone down there answer? Try!

  There came a hard bright response, shocking in its eagerness:

  O shining boymind who?

  Well ... Aiken Drum that's who.

  Hold still littlemind so far yet so glowing. Ah!

  No. Stop that—!

  Do not pull away Shining One. What can you be?

  Let go dammit!

  Do not withdraw I think I know you...

  Suddenly, he was overcome by an unprecedented fear. That distant unknown was locking onto him, coming at him in some manner down the pathway of his own mind's beam. He pulled away from the grasp and discovered too late that it was going to take almost all of his strength to sever the connection. He torc free. He found himself falling through thin air, his dragonfly shape shifted back to vulnerable humanity. Wind whistled in his ears. He plunged toward the boat, mind and voice screaming, and only managed to regain control and the insect form a scant moment before disaster. Trembling and funked out, he settled to the tip of the mast.

  His projected panic had awakened the others. The boat began to rock, generating concentric ripples in the pale lagoon. Elizabeth and Creyn emerged from the covered passenger compartment to stare at him; and Raimo, with an expression of bleary incomprehension on his upturned face; and scowling Stein, with worried little Sukey; and Highjohn, the skipper, who yelled, "I know that's you up there, Aiken Drum! God help you if you've been playing any of your tricks with my boat!"

  The boatman's shout brought out the last passenger, the torcless anthropologist, Bryan Grenfell, who was feeling testy and was aware of none of the telepathic querying now being hurled at the dragonfly by the others. "Is it necessary to rock the boat quite so much?"

  "Aiken, come down," Creyn said aloud.

  "Not bloody likely," the dragonfly replied. Wings abuzz, the insect prepared to flee.

  The Tanu raised one slender hand in an ironic gesture. "Fly away, then, you fool. But be sure you understand what you're renouncing. It makes no difference that you've escaped the torc. We were expecting that. Allowances have been made. Special privileges have been arranged for you in Muriah."

  A doubting laugh. "I've already had a little hint of that."

  "So?" Creyn was unconcerned. "If you'd kept your wits about you, you'd know that you have nothing to fear from Mayvar. On the contrary! But make no mistake—even without the silver torc, she is able to detect you now, wherever you might go. Running away would be the worst mistake you could possibly make. There's nothing for you out there, all alone. Your fulfillment lies with us, in Muriah. Now come down. It's time we resumed our journey. We should arrive in the capital tonight, and you can judge for yourself whether or not I've told the truth."

  Abruptly, the tall exotic man withdrew into the passenger compartment. The small group of humans remained on deck, gaping.

  "Oh—what the hell," said the dragonfly.

  It spiraled down, landed at the skipper's feet, and became a little man clad in a gold-fabric costume all covered with pockets. Self-confidence completely restored, Aiken Drum grinned his golliwog grin.

  "Maybe I will stick around awhile. For as long as it suits me."

  ***

  That evening, when the throng of Tanu riders came to welcome the boat to the shores of Aven, Bryan could think of only a single thing: that Mercy might be somewhere among the exotic cavalcade. And so he rushed from one side of the boat to the other while a team of twenty stout helladotheria, looking something like giant okapis, were hitched to the craft in preparation for its being hauled up the long rollered way to Muriah. There was a bright gibbous moon. A kilometer or so above the docks, which lay on a saltflat surrounded by weathered masses of striped evaporite, the Tanu capital city glittered on the dark peninsular height like an Earthbound galaxy.

  "Mercy!" Bryan called. "Mercy, I'm here!"

  There were numbers of human men and women riding together with the tall exotics, dressed, like them, either in faceted and spiked glass armor or richly jeweled gauze robes. The flameless torches that they carried cast beams of many colors. The riders laughed at Bryan and ignored the questions that he tried to shout amidst the tumult of the hitching.

  So many of the human women perched on the great chalikos seemed to have auburn hair! Again and again Bryan strained to catch a closer glimpse of a likely one. But always when the beautiful rider approached it was not Mercy Lamballe—nor even one who really looked like her.

  Aiken Drum stood on one of the boat seats posturing like a gilded puppet, throwing out teasing or challenging quips that provoked exotic hilarity and increased the bedlam. The Finno-Canadian woodsman, Raimo Hakkinen, hung over the pneumatic gunwale of the boat kissing the proffered hands of the ladies and toasting the men with swigs from his silver flask. In contrast, Stein Oleson sat back in the shadows with one huge arm curved protectively around Sukey, both of them apprehensive.

  Skipper Highjohn came to stand beside Bryan in the bows. He fingered the gray torc around his neck and laughed out loud. "We'll be on our way any minute now, Bryan. What a welcome! I've never seen anything like it. Just look at your tricky little gold friend up there! They'll have a hell of a time taming that one—if they ever do!"

  Bryan looked at the smiling brown face blankly. "What? I'm—I'm sorry, Johnny. I wasn't listening. I thought I saw—someone. A woman I once knew."

  With kind firmness the boatman pressed the anthropologist down onto one of the benches. Teamsters whipped up the hellads and the boat began to roll, accompanied by cheers and a bell-loud clangor from the escort, some of whom were beating their gem-studded shields with glowing swords. From nearly a hundred throats and minds came the Tanu Song, its melody oddly familiar to Bryan, for all that the words were alien:

  Li gan nol po'kône niési,

  'Kône o lan li pred néar,

  U taynel compri la neyn,

  Ni blepan algar dedône.

  Shompri pône, a gabrinel,

  Shal u car metan presi,

  Nar metan u bor taynel o pogekône,

  Car metan sed gône mori.

  Bryan's fingers dug into the boat's splashcover fabric. The fantastic panoply of riders swirled along the towpath as the boat mounted a long slope. There was no vegetation this close to the salty lagoon, but eroded lumps and pillars of mineral loomed in the wavering shadows like the ruins of some elfin palace. The train entered a depression between steep cliffs and bright Muriah disappeared from view. The hellad-drawn boat and its faerie escort seemed to move toward a black tunnel mouth flanked by huge broken cherubim. The Song echoed from overlooming walls.

  An old imagery reasserted itself to Bryan. A cave—deep and dark—and a loved thing lost inside. He was a small boy and the time was six million years into the future: in England, in the Mendip Hills where the family had a cottage. And his kitten, Cinders, wandered off, and he searched for three days. And finally he had stumbled upon the entrance to the little cave, barely large enough for his eight-year-old body to wriggle through. He had stood staring at the fetid black hole for more than an hour, knowing that he should search it but terrified at the thought.

  In the end, he had taken a small electric torch and wormed his way in. The passage twisted and angled downward. Scratched by sharp stones and nearly breathless with fear, he had slithered on. The stench from bat droppings was dreadful. All daylight vanished at a turn in the narrowing corridor; and then the crack opened into a deep cavern, too large to be illuminated by his little flashlight. He aimed the beam downward and saw no bottom. "Cinders!" he called, and his boy's voice reverberated in broken wails. There was a horrid rustle and a faint sound of squeaking. From the cave roof high above, a mist of acrid bat urine drifted down upon him.

  Choking and retching, he had tried to turn around, but the crevice was too narrow. There was nothing for it but to back out on his stomach, tears streaming down his cheeks, knowing that at any moment the bats might fly into his face and sink their teeth into nose and lips and cheeks a
nd ears.

  He dropped the torch as he hunched along. Maybe the light would frighten the bats. He kept going, centimeter by centimeter backward over rough stones, his knees and elbows getting rawer. The passage would never end! It was already much longer than it had been when he entered! And it was tighter, too, squeezing him beneath unimaginable tons of black rock until he knew it would press away his life...

  He came out.

  Too weak even to sob, he had lain there until the sun was low. When he was able to get up and stagger home, he found Cinders lapping a saucer of cream in the back garden. The ghastly trip into the cave had been for nothing.

  "I hate you!" he had screamed, bringing his mother on the run. But by the time she reached him he was cradling the black kitten against his bruised and filthy cheek, stroking it while the sound of its purring helped slow his thudding heart.

  Cinders had lived for another fifteen years, fat and complacent, while Bryan's boyish devotion to the animal dwindled away into vague fondness. But he would live forever with the horror of the loved thing lost, the fear and the gush of hate at the end because his bravery had been wasted. And now he was entering another chasm...

  The friendly voice of the skipper drew him back. "The lady you're looking for. Did they tell you she was down here in Muriah?"

  "An interviewer back at Castle Gateway recognized her picture. He said she had been sent here. Creyn seemed to hint that if I cooperated with the local authorities along professional lines, she and I might—meet."

  He hesitated only for a moment before unbuttoning his breast pocket and taking out the durofilm sheet. Highjohn stared at Mercy's self-luminous portrait.

  "What a beautiful, haunted face! I don't know who she is here, Bry, but then I'm on the river most of the time. God knows I'd never forget her if I ever did catch sight of her. Those eyes—! You poor bastard."

  "You can say that again, Johnny."

  "Why did she come here?" the skipper asked.

  "I don't know. Ridiculous, isn't it, Johnny? I knew her only a single day. And then I had to leave her for some work that seemed to be important. When I returned, she was gone. All I could do was follow after. It was the only choice open to me. Do you understand?"

  "Sure, Bry. I understand. My own reasons for coming weren't that different. Except that no one was waiting ... But there's something you've got to expect, when you do find her. She'll be changed."

  "She was a latent. They'll have given her a silver torc. I'm aware of that."

  The big riverman shook his head slowly. Once again he touched his own gray necklet. "There's more to it than a latent's becoming operant—although God knows, acquiring metafaculties all of a sudden has its hazards, so I'm told. But even us grays—without getting any metafunctions to speak of—gain something fantastic through this torc. Something that we never had before." He pursed his thin purplish lips, then suddenly exclaimed, "Listen, man! What do you hear?"

  "They're singing in their Tanu language."

  "And to you, the words mean nothing. But to us collared ones, the Song says well-met, and fear-not, and this-is-it, and we-you-us! When a human being becomes part of the torced society, he gains a whole new level of consciousness. Even us grays, with no operant metafunctions, can share in it. It's more than telepathy—although that's a part of it. It's a whole new form of social intercourse, this mind-to-mind intimacy. How the hell can I explain it? Like being a member of some kind of superfamily. You know you belong to this great thing that keeps rolling along and taking you with it. You'll never be alone in your pain again. Never be outside. Never be rejected. Any time you need strength or comfort, you can dip into the collective resource. It's not a smothering thing because you can take as much or as little of it as you choose—well, subject to limitations unless you're a gold-wearer. You obey orders, just like in the service ... But what I'm trying to tell you is that wearing these things changes you deep inside. It doesn't happen right away, but it does happen. As you wear the torc, you're educated whether you want to be or not. Your lady is going to be a different person from the one you remember."

  "She might not want me. Is that what you're trying to prepare me for?"

  "I don't know her, Bry. People react in different ways to the torcs. Some of them bloom. Most of them."

  The anthropologist did not meet the skipper's dark eyes. "And some don't. I see. What happens to the failures?"

  "There aren't too many among us grays. The Tanu have worked out a fairish battery of tests to sort out the go and no go. Human psychotechnicians working under Lord Gomnol try to make sure that no normal human gets a gray torc unless his or her PS profile shows that the device will be generally beneficial to the individual's functioning. They don't want to waste the torcs because they're not easy to make. If your psychosocial tests show that you're a maverick, likely to whack out unless you're allowed to stew in your own independent juice, then you don't get a gray collar. They'll coerce you in more conventional ways to make you a productive member of their society—or else give up and toss you into the discard. But the real winners here in Exile are the torc wearers. The Tanu know they can trust us because they can share our thoughts and control our rewards. So we're allowed positions of responsibility. Look at me! Tanu are lousy swimmers. But I've had members of the High Table, the top Tanu administration, riding in my boat."

  "With never a qualm, I trust."

  "Okay—laugh. But I'd never do anything to endanger the lives of the exotics and they know it. It would be unthinkable!"

  "But you're not free."

  "Nobody is ever free," the skipper said. "Was I a goddam lily of the field back in the Milieu, piloting my ferryboat on Tallahatchie with Lee driving me crazy jealous? Here in this world, with this torc, I follow Tanu orders. And in return I get a share in the kind of mindpleasures that only the metapsychics got in our twenty-second century. It's like seeing with a thousand eyes. Or going high with a thousand bodies all at once. I can't tell you how it is. I'm no poet. No psychologist, either."

  "I'm beginning to understand, Johnny. The torcs are certainly more complex than I first thought."

  "They make life a lot easier for the people who can stand up to 'em. Just take the matter of language. In our Milieu, the exotic sociologists knew how vital it was for each single race to have a single language. That's why we humans had to agree to become monolingual as a condition to Milieu acceptance—and Standard English won hands down. But with this mental speech, any kind of verbal misunderstanding is impossible! When another person mindspeaks to you, you know exactly what the message is."

  Half to himself, Bryan murmured, "Barbaric. That's why the Milieu places such strict limitations on the metas. Especially the human metas."

  "I don't get your point there, Bry. See what I mean? If you wore a torc, I'd know exactly what you were trying to say."

  "Forget it, Johnny. Just my cynicism showing its fangs."

  "To me, the mental unity seems ideal. But then, I'm just a dumb sailorman whose lover went over to another. Now if the two of us had been able to understand each other from the start ... aw, the hell with it. Now there are thousands of people who love me. In a manner of speaking."

  The skipper waved at the procession of riders. Almost all of them immediately waved back. Bryan felt something cold clutch at his bowels.

  "Johnny?"

  The skipper broke out of his reverie. "Mm?"

  "Not all of the time-travelers are tested for psychocompatibility before being forced. Stein wasn't. Tliey collared him when he became a menace."

  Highjohn shrugged. "You can understand why. The torc can be used to subdue rebellious people on a short-range or long-range basis. Since your pal is still with us, I presume they have some plans for him. Certain types—medics and some other specialists who rarely come through the gate—they get collared willy-nilly, too. Essential occupations."

  "And the metapsychic latents—people such as Aiken and Sukey and Raimo? They were apparently put into silver collars as soo
n as their latency was detected, without consideration of any adverse mental consequences."

  "Well, the silvers are a special case," Highjohn admitted. "There's the matter of the genes."

  Bryan looked at him.

  "The Tanu use human women in their breeding scheme, Bry. Some human men as well. Normals, latents, both kinds get used. But the latents are the most valuable to them. I'm not too clear on the specifics of the thing, but somehow they figure that putting human latent genes into their pool will speed the day when the whole Tanu race goes operant. You know ... just like the human race is going operant back in the Milieu."

  "But the Tanu are operant now, with their golden torcs!"

  "Limited, man, limited. Even the best of 'em can't measure up to masterclass metas in the Milieu. And none of the Tanu are a patch on our Grand Masters. Nope—they're got a long way to go in the mind-power game. But this genetic scheme is supposed to give them a boost. The Tanu are great schemers. Plotting and fighting are their favorite sports—followed closely by screwing, drinking, and feasting. The gene plan is just one of the ways they're trying to consolidate their advantage over the Firvulag. You know about the Little People, don't you? Racial brothers to the Tanu. No-torc operants—but only in illusion making, creativity, and some farsensing, for the most part. Firvulag genes are strong recessives among Tanu, so the Tanu mothers keep throwing Firvulag babies. And the little gnomies are physically tougher and reproduce a hell of a lot faster than the Tanu do. So if the Tanu want to keep control of Exile, they've got their work cut out for them."

  "I'm starting to appreciate the situation," Bryan said. "But, come back to the silver-torcs. If they're indiscriminately collared, then some of them must whip out under the neural tension."

  "True. Some go mad. Any kind of torc can do that if the personality of the wearer is fundamentally incompatible. Even the pure Tanu have their zonk-outs. Black-torcs, they call 'em. However, even if a silver goes bananas, the Tanu try to save the genes. A woman will be put on oblivion hold and used as brood stock until she breaks down. If she can't be restored by the healers, her ova can be transplanted to ramas. That often doesn't pan out because these exotic folks have a crude reprotechnology—but they try anyhow."